As I always say, you certainly will not get inundated with posts from my Blog during the school year because for me it is crazy busy. I live deadline to deadline, and although I’m not always proud of that I certainly do get all of my work done. 

This all being said, I made this New Year’s January 1, 2026 deadline, and I’m going to complete it because some great things have happened this fall (and I am not pretending that everything during 2025 was great). But as I enter 2026, I am proud of a few things that I would like to share that really pay notice to my mosaic of world language teaching. 

First off, this fall I was awarded the 2025-26 Ohio World Language Teacher of the Year through the Ohio World Language Association (OWLA). What an honor it is to be given this title as a way to validate all of the hard work I have done for the past 23 years and will continue to do for the next 23 in my professional life. Whether it has been helping my students’ language proficiency grow in Spanish, working with educators throughout the country to help their classroom practice, or helping others see the importance of creating safe spaces for all students, or giving LGBTQ+ students and their allies opportunities to be who they are in their school communities through advocacy for GSAs in school or on that one special day a year where I’ve now hosted 18 youth conferences in Northeast Ohio – my work is being celebrated and that feels terrific!  

This October, I had also had the chance to sit down with the wonderful Spanish teacher Claudia Elliot and share my thoughts on Teaching Intermediate Students on her Podcast: Growing with Proficiency. In my constant effort to continue to grow, doing the podcast forced me to reflect on my daily practices and the result was a fun interview experience and blog post that allowed me the opportunity to share some ideas that are constantly being developed in my head and eventually happening in my classroom. If you have not checked out her blog, podcasts, or academy community, she has created years worth of professional development and ideas for world language educators, it is astounding. 

I ended the interview sharing a new resource which is a picture talk template for engaging our intermediate students in multiple time frames. I share that resource here and this is part of a bigger 2025-26 goal of mine: to incorporate more cultural picture talks or Culture Talks with my students in order to both build their cultural competence and language proficiency. During the first semester I’ve already had good success with incorporating this idea in my classes and I will continue to do so for the remainder of the year. In fact, I will be talking about it at both this year’s Central States Conference in Chicago and OWLA (Ohio World Language Association) Conference in Columbus. In fact if you have a favorite Culture Talk with students that you use via a picture, share it below in the comments or email it to me. Adding to the fun this fall was in November when we traveled with 21 students for a homestay experience in Cuzco, Peru. We all had such a wonderful experience on the trip (we planned it with Prometour), and so many of my pictures are amazing. This photo is one that I’ll be incorporating with my students as a Culture Talk this January. 

I’m also writing this post to remind us all that if you have any idea sitting in the back of your mind personally or professionally, take advantage of the long winter months to possibly try it out. For example, my husband brought me home an art project 2 years ago, and it has been sitting in my basement untouched. I am writing this now at 3:00 P.M. Twenty minutes ago, I finished grading all of my midterms and yesterday on New Year’s Eve I met two big deadlines. So I am going to go and create my Filipino Christmas Star project, and when I am finished with that, I am going to post this. 

I hope that I am able to post this tonight in the true spirit of accomplishing a goal on New Year’s and as I said, I do love a good deadline. Unfortunately I still have my 90 student student surveys to read and then I have to prepare for next week’s classes and work toward my next two deadlines which I have already started. But for now I will just take one moment at a time and I’m going to go craft even if it is two years later – today is the day I was finally ready to do it. Happy New Year!

The Finished Product by 5:30

If you have not signed up for the email feature to get my few reflections a year in your inbox, please do.